Eleven Pipers Piping (35 page)

“But—good heavens—surely someone in Torquay would have been able to identify you. Put you
in
Torquay at the time of your wife’s death.”

“An alibi.”

“Yes.”

“I did have an alibi.” John paused and lifted a dart. “And I didn’t.”

Tom stepped from the pub into the cold, bitter air and glanced upwards as he held the door ajar for John. The night sky, pricked with stars, decanted into the coal blackness of the village, punctuated by squares of window light here and there winding up the hills. The
hour was late. He didn’t need his watch to tell him so: He could read the story in the arrangement of illuminated windows in the vicarage, a shadow looming past the low stone wall across Church Walk. Three gold squares below the roof proclaimed Madrun’s waking presence in her private flat, but no light escaped from the floor below, where his daughter slept. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, he felt a stab of regret for his evening absences from Miranda’s bedtime routine, but he could do nothing but let the feeling pass and thank God for his wise child’s understanding. He looked to the windows of the ground floor where light behind sheer curtains cast a glow over a remnant snowdrift half covering the rosebushes below the sill—a lamp in the sitting room for the master’s return. Judith, he presumed, had gone to bed—but no, for as he and John descended the few stairs to the cobbles of Church Walk and turned towards Poynton Shute, Judith emerged into the circle of light afforded by the pub’s security lamp, shining her torch in front of her.

“You’re out late,” Tom called to her.

“Visiting old friends,” Judith called back, shining her torch on them, one to the other. “Are you coming?”

“Shortly. Go on ahead. We have a … something we have to do first.”

“Oh, Mr. Copeland, I thought I might pay a visit to Noze Lydiard.” She moved under the light.

“I’m afraid the castle is closed to visitors in the winter.”

“That’s all right. I visited it many times when I was a girl. What I meant was the estate, where you work.”

“Well …”

“I’ve never been on a shooting estate, you see. There wasn’t one at Noze when I was young.”

“I’m not sure there would be much of interest to a … a …”

“To a woman?” Judith peered up at him, then glanced at Tom as if seeking an ally.

“Well …” John frowned, clearly discomfited. “We have an American syndicate coming on Monday and we’re booked through to the end of the season.”

“Then Sunday—afternoon? Lovely. I’ll see you then, if I don’t see you in church earlier.”

Judith waved and continued towards the vicarage gate.

“Sorry,” Tom murmured, feeling the need to apologise for his guest’s behaviour.

“Bloody cheek.”

“You could have said no.”

“She caught me off guard.”

“Well, best we don’t go to the vicarage to talk. Let’s go into the church for a minute.” He felt in the pocket of his Barbour. “I’ve got the copy keys. Fred will have closed up hours ago. Have you got your torch?”

“Any word on a new verger?” John pulled the instrument from his coat pocket and switched it on, sending a beam of light along the cobbles.

“If you had been at the PCC meeting Tuesday evening, you’d know.”

“I’m very sorry. I had something that needed doing.”

Tom regretted his waspish tone. “It’s all right. Briony tells me she’s about finished the minutes, so you should have a copy emailed before long. Anyway, no, we’re no further in attracting a new verger. I miss Sebastian,” he added, referring to the previous incumbent. “He somehow fit the contours of the role. Fred means well. I can’t fault him too much, but he does lack a certain … something. He’s absolutely swimming in the verger’s gown, and I’m not sure it’s worth the expense having a new one fitted for him.”

“At least he doesn’t pinch the church silver.”

“No, that’s a blessing.”

Fred Pike, village handyman, sexton, and general all-round good egg, was also the village kleptomaniac, a bent Thornfordites forgave
and accommodated by trading back the purloined objects or selling them at fund-raising events for the church.

The two walked on in silence through the lych-gate and scrunched down the pea shingle path towards St. Nicholas’s north porch. With the end of the pub quiz—with the prize-giving attended by much cheering—conversation in the Church House Inn had fallen swiftly to a sedate murmur, no damper to private and candid conversation. They had said their good-byes to Eric Swan, the landlord.

John aimed his torch on the ancient lock of the north door; Tom turned the key and pushed the great slab of oak open into the dark, then, groping, pushed the interior door into the charcoal gloom of the nave where column, wall, and pew blended into a single dormant mass. The air was glacial cold, an amalgam of ice and dust. When he had said his evening office in the chancel at six thirty he hadn’t bothered to switch on the heating system.

“The vestry would be best,” he said to John, who aimed his torch along the flagstones of the ancient floor. “There’s the old space heater in there.”

Unconcerned with aesthetics had been the moderniser who had installed fluorescent light in the vestry ceiling. The three bars flicked and buzzed after Tom pressed the switch, then cast a shocking glare over the lime-washed walls, garishly bleaching the tiny room’s detritus: the litter of papers and old magazines, the stacks of frayed hymnals, the jumble of cleaning supplies, the boxes of candles, the bursting of clerical clothing peeking from a full corner closet. Under its pitiless blue-white brilliance, too, skin appeared pale and grey. Tom could see the unflattering effect on his own face in the clouded old wood-frame mirror over the vestry table before he crouched to activate the heater, then again in John’s when he turned to face him. They stood, as even the single chair in the vestry supported a tower of books.

“I was telling you in the pub,” John began, “that I had an alibi for the time of my wife’s death. And that I didn’t.”

Tom nodded, waited.

“I booked a room at the Imperial—”

“Yes.”

“—and stayed over.”

“Then …” Tom shrugged, puzzled, “you had a credit card receipt. A waiter remembered you from the dining room …”

John shook his head. “I was only in the bar for a while. You see … I met a woman.”

“Ah.” Tom leaned his back into the edge of the vestry table. “I think I get the picture, John. But then wouldn’t she be your alibi?”

“I only had her Christian name, you see, and even that, it turns out, wasn’t real. She was in Torquay for a conference.”

“Well, I suppose I should make some priestly remarks about infidelity, but … I must say, John, you work fast.”

“It wasn’t me who worked fast,” John protested. “She was the one who invited me to
her
room.”

“ ‘No thank you’ is always an option.”

“I lost my head. I know it was wrong, but after years of misery living with Regina … and she was beautiful, a stunner.”

“You’re saying this woman couldn’t be found.”

“No, she couldn’t. There were hundreds at the conference. The Imperial is enormous. Big staff. Lots of guests milling about. You know, you’ve been there, I’m sure.”

“Aren’t there security cameras in the halls?”

“This is nearly a dozen years ago. Security was less of a concern.”

“Or CCTV clocking you leaving the parking area?”

John shrugged. “I think the police thought my involvement in Regina’s death was a bit of a half-baked idea. They were only being goaded by Hugh.”

“There was an inquest, of course. What was the ruling?”

John looked away. “The coroner ruled an open verdict.”

Which meant, Tom considered, that insufficient evidence had
been found for suicide or accident or unlawful killing. In the eyes of the law, John was not yet free and clear of culpability. He took a full breath and said, “I can understand how distressing it can be to go through this sort of process.” Tom gave a passing thought to the aftermath of his own wife’s murder—the questions, the suspicions—and felt again a shiver of distaste. “I suppose it got in the papers.”

“Some. The legend that Noze Lydiard Castle is haunted by ghosts who lure people to St. Hilda’s tower and to their death didn’t help.”

“I can imagine. You said earlier that your wife’s death bore some relation to—”

“It has to do with my alibi. You see, years later—five years, to be precise—I happened to meet the woman I’d been with that night.”

“Yes …?”

“It was at Upper Coombe Farm where Dave Shapley has his barbecues for the band in the summer. Will Moir had joined the Thistle But Mostly Rose that spring and since the invitation included wives or partners, he came with his wife.” He paused. “Caroline Moir was the woman I’d been with.”

Tom allowed an affect of surprise to play over his features, but he supposed he wasn’t very convincing, for John folded his arms and said, “You don’t seem … shocked.”

“I am a little,” Tom allowed. He didn’t wish to say he knew the Moirs had had at least one significant bad patch in their marriage. Was this Torquay episode cause or effect? “But it hasn’t escaped the notice of some of the women in the church that you appear to have a soft spot for Caroline.”

John looked off towards the lancet window, his silence assent.

“Did you ask Caroline to confirm to authorities that you couldn’t have driven back to Noze that night and pushed your wife down the castle stairs?”

“No, I didn’t. How could I involve her in something so sordid?”

“Then …?”

“There’s something more, Tom.” John twisted the cap in his hands. “Ariel is my child.”

Tom started. “What
are
you talking about?”

“She is. I know it. Think about her. Think about what she looks like.”

Tom wished to resist this speculation, but, unbidden, Ariel Moir’s face shimmered into consciousness. He had seen her at play with Miranda many times, and in the company of Will or Caroline many times, too. Yes, it was true, Ariel did not appear, like her brother, Adam, to be a variation on the familial theme of litheness and blondness. Yes, she was dark-haired and sturdy-bodied. Yes, possibly, she could be a tiny female edition of the dark, sturdy-bodied, ruddy-faced man before him, but only possibly, where folk were swimming in the same crammed Anglo-Saxon-Celtic gene pool.

“But, John, all children don’t look a match to their parents. Would you say Miranda is my spitting image? She looks more identifiably like her mother, but I am as assured as any man can be that I am her father. What on earth has put this idea into your head?”

“Being at the vicarage Sunday confirmed it for me. Sitting at breakfast with Ariel. But I’ve wondered before, when I’ve glimpsed her with Caroline bringing her to Sunday school. It’s there! It’s in her face, in her gestures. I’m her father.”

“You’re
not
her father, John. It doesn’t matter if you made some … genetic contribution. By law, a woman’s husband is the father of her child. Will Moir is Ariel’s father.”

“But Will is dead.”

The words fell between them like a sword.

“That changes nothing,” Tom countered heatedly. The nasty thought that John had rid himself of Will in order to claim his woman and his child tore across his consciousness. “Will’s death doesn’t provide you with a claim to his child. It’s outrageous to trouble Caroline with this—now, with Will not even buried. Don’t tell
me you’ve actually broached this with Caroline? Oh, Lord, you have. I can read it in your face.”

“I’m thinking of Ariel,” John protested, his face reddening again.

“That’s why you weren’t at Tuesday’s meeting, yes? You were at Thorn Court with Caroline. How can you say you’re thinking of Ariel? Any sort of inkling of this—at this time—would hurt and confuse the girl terribly. John, have you lost your mind?”

“What would happen if something happened to Caroline?”

“What
could
happen to Caroline? She’s still a young woman.”

“And Will was a reasonably young man.”

“He was a healthy young man until someone poisoned him, John.”

“What would happen if something happened to Caroline?” John persisted. “Who would take care of Ariel?”

“But it’s none of your business.”

“But who?”

Tom released an exasperated sigh. He knew Will had no living parents, no siblings. But Caroline wasn’t bereft.

“Caroline’s mother,” he said.

“She’s elderly and living on the other side of the world.”

“There’s Nick.”

“Would you be happy seeing a court award Ariel to Nick Stanhope’s care?”

“Adam.”

“He’s barely out of childhood himself. Too immature to raise a child.”

“You work with him.”

“That’s how I know.”

“John, I’ll grant you the possibility that something could remove Caroline from the picture. Something could take any of us, couldn’t it? We could be hit by a car speeding down a lane. But I can’t grant the probability. I’m not sure what you want me to do.”

“My hope is that Caroline will tell you it’s true.”

“That you’re Ariel’s father? Which, I take, she didn’t countenance Tuesday.”

“Yes.”